Period group Les Siècles, young composer Clara Ianotta and a new Peter Grimes from Edward Gardner and Stuart Skelton are among our highlights from a year in which the live music might have stopped but the recording industry continued undimmed
Opera and concert life has been forced into suspended animation for much of this year, but the classical recording industry has pressed on regardless, with little obvious slowing in the rate of new releases. By and large, the trends of the previous few years continued: the proliferation of smaller niche labels continued to come up with the more interesting repertoire while the output of leading brands became steadily less adventurous.
There were some oddities, though. The expected deluge of Beethoven releases to mark his 250th birthday never quite happened, and though there were certainly notable new titles – the Brodsky Quartet playing the late string quartets; Ian Bostridge and Antonio Pappano’s collection of songs; the set of the symphonies under nine differentconductors issued by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; Daniel Barenboim’s cycle of the piano sonatas (the fifth he has recorded) and his second of the piano trios – perhaps the most significant anniversary project was René Jacobs’ recording of Leonore, the original 1805 version of the opera we know today as Fidelio, which actually appeared at the end of last year.